ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a brief outline of the Bank's 'partnership' approach, as a way of setting the context for the National Centre for Business and Sustainability (NCBS) project. It focuses on the first of these—the work undertaken by the NCBS to assess the environmental and social impacts of the Bank's service channels. The chapter deals with some general comments on the implications of this project for sustainable banking. As in many business sectors, the more forward-thinking banks and financial service providers are currently looking at the need for, and possible ways of addressing, sustainable development. The Co-operative Bank was founded in 1872 to serve the UK co-operative movement. Once the range of ecological and social impacts that could be associated with the Bank's service channels had been identified, the next stage of the NCBS project was to select a limited number of key indicators to reflect those potential impacts.
